Nintendo leak lists scrapped DS projects, including Pokemon Pinball, Geist DS, PLUCKER proposal from Magic the Gathering creator
Earlier this week, we heard about a whole bunch of Wii projects that were left on the cutting room floor, including a Metroid game from Intelligent Systems. We now have the equivalent from the DS side of things. Once again, this news comes from the latest Nintendo leaks as part of the company’s overall “gigaleak”.
One notable revelation is that it appears Metroid Prime Pinball developer Fuse was once planning a new Pokemon Pinball game for DS, and it would have included Wi-Fi support. We also have confirmation about the long-rumored Geist DS – complete with online play. Also, there’s something here called “PLUCKER” – a strategy game proposed by Magic the Gathering creator Richard Garfield.
Here’s the full roundup regarding DS details uncovered from this week’s Nintendo leak, courtesy of MondoMega:
- Rhythm Tengoku is listed as ‘RIQ’ (full working title is known to be Rhythm IQ). Notes for the game say “The songs will be newly written for this game, so OK for the whole world”.
- Elite Beat Agents was once known as Super Sonic Agents.
- Pokemon Pinball is listed as a DS title, with Wi-Fi support. Developer is ‘FUSE’. Target release date was September 2006.
- Geist DS is listed. Had online play.
- Gauntlet DS.
- Some game called ‘PLUCKER’, developed by ‘NIGHTLIGHT’. Notes: ‘Proposal from Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic the Gathering. A strategy game that replaces card games with figures’.
- ‘Digitylish DS’. there were plans to bring the series over to DS before DSiWare existed.
- Soma Bringer was once known as Angelic Soma, and included online play. The game was originally set to be complete in September 2006.
- Banjo and Conker being replaced by Dixie and Tiny in Diddy Kong Racing DS is something NCL specifically note.
- There was some consideration in having NoA and NoE localize and publish Contact (by Grasshopper Manufacture). The spreadsheet describes it as a “Mother-like”.
- They considered redoing the character designs for the North American localization of Magical Starsign.
- The notes on New Super Mario Bros. specially mentions “Plans to distribute additional data for new courses via Wi-Fi”. Also mentions reusing the minigames from Super Mario 64 DS.
- Digitylish DS had “two prototypes in progress”, and Skip were “considering other projects in parallel”. It was suggest that they “extend the prototype period by 6 months to explore a new business model”; possibly an early reference to to DSi Shop.
- At the point this document was made online play wasn’t actually locked in for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl; mentioned as a consideration.
- There were a lot of working titles and early names. Most are “franchise name” then DS or [number of installment]; Chibi-Robo DS, Jump Super Stars 2, Mario vs. Donkey Kong DS, Yoshi’s Island 2, Kirby DS, Burabura Donkey DS, etc. Some publicly known early titles were also in use here, like Detect Hacker (Project Hacker), Wish Room (Hotel Dusk) and Eternal Chronicle (Glory of Heracles). There’s also ‘Game Fortune Bag’ (Clubhouse Games) and Marionation Gear (Chosoju Mecha MG).
Also as a bit of extra information, below are a few GameCube tidbits as well:
- Donkey Kong Barrel Blast and Super Paper Mario are still listed as GameCube games.
- ‘Kirby’ is still listed as a GameCube title. Note says that the game should be made like Kirby Super Star.
- Captain Rainbow was a GameCube game; listed as ‘ウラキャラ’ (background character).
- Super Paper Mario and Donkey Kong Barrel Blast have different early titles; Super Paper Mario Bros. and Tarutaru Donkey (a play on the Japanese title for DK: King of Swing, Burabura Donkey, also developed by Paon).
- NCL specifically requested that the power plug / outlets in Chibi-Robo not be localized.
